


Area 52

by airgeer



Category: Glee
Genre: Alien Abduction, Gen, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-27
Updated: 2013-04-27
Packaged: 2017-12-09 15:04:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/775581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/airgeer/pseuds/airgeer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The room is white, the halls are white, the Earth is far away. All Kurt really wants is to go home, but he'd settle for being a little less alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Area 52

**Author's Note:**

  * For [narie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/narie/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Lima, Ohio](https://archiveofourown.org/works/497127) by [narie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/narie/pseuds/narie). 



> For narie, a little extra something at the end of the remix challenge that isn't actually that little. Title is from the song "Area 52" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

There had been a flash of light. Kurt had thought it was from oncoming headlights, but then it had grown larger and larger and brighter and brighter until he had to close his eyes, slamming his foot down towards the brake pedal, not knowing what was happening but instinctively trying to stop.

 

The brakes were gone though, his seatbelt dissolved into nothing, and he was somewhere else, standing now. The light was gone but the burning in his eyes remained, and he blinked quickly, trying to clear the spots so he could see again.

 

The air was acrid, sticking in his nose and throat, and everything was so, so quiet. Quieter than the house had been after Mom, quieter even than after Dad’s heart attack, when he’d been alone and afraid to make a sound and turn it all real.

 

Now, though, now…

 

The floor was hard underneath his feet, and there was a faint breeze, the artificial movement of air that came from a ventilation system. He could see again, but he almost wished he couldn’t, wished he could have stayed in that limbo between safety and the unknown.

 

The wall in front of him was white, a sheen that was more lustrous than any paint Kurt had ever seen covering them, and in it was displays. One large one, and many small ones all around it, and in the large one was him, driving along the highway like nothing had happened.

 

He didn’t understand, and it wasn’t until there was a sharp pain in his palm as a fingernail squeezed through skin that he realized he was holding himself still and frozen, barely breathing and fists clenched. He stepped back, staring at his own face, but not him, it couldn’t be him, because he wasn’t pulling off the highway, he was standing in a room.

 

Escape was the only thing he was thinking then. He whirled around, searching for an exit, but then he saw the window. No curtains, just a smooth gape in the wall that _could_ have been another screen, god Kurt wished it was another screen, but somehow he knew that it was a window, that it was the Earth he was looking down at through the emptiness of space.

 

There was a whimper, Kurt knew it was him but couldn’t stop it, and his knees collapsed underneath him, hitting the hard white floor with a muffled crash. His hands were over his mouth now, otherwise he thought he would be screaming, and he watched the world spin by below him.

 

~

_Human date 24 08 2011: Subject K56 acquired after observation period concluded. Transfer successful._

~

 

He was alone and he wasn’t alone. There were glimpses of movement that he _knew_ he wasn’t imagining, but he couldn’t find anyone or anything. The ship was a maze, all corridors, and they all seemed to lead back to that first room in the end.

 

After the eighth time he found himself at the entry to that same damned room, where he could watch something that wasn’t him, that he refused to think of as himself, lie on his bed with its eyes closed peacefully, he slammed the side of his fist into the screen.

 

It buzzed, flexed and gave against his hand, and then flowed back into shape as soon as his hand was gone, the image of his own still face never disappearing. Kurt was left to watch, his eyes welling up with tears that he didn’t notice until they dropped onto his cheeks.

 

It was summer, the end of his last summer as a high school student. Now it seemed like it would be his last summer, because he was alone, and trapped, and not even on Earth anymore.

 

There was a blanket folded in a corner.

 

Kurt noticed it out of the corner of his eye, and tried for a moment to pretend that he hadn’t seen it before, but it had been there the last time he had left the room. It was inky black against the white of the walls and floor, though, and he knew that he hadn’t simply missed it, that it had been placed there while he had been searching for…

 

What had he been searching for? A way out? He wasn’t labouring under the delusion that the window was a trick, he couldn’t deny that something impossible had happened, that someone or some _thing_ had replaced him, switched places so fast that his Navigator hadn’t even drifted into the ditch during. After that, being held prisoner in a spaceship seemed almost reasonable, and there was no way out of a spaceship.

 

But then, who was to say that he was being reasonable? The blanket lay limply in the corner, but Kurt was afraid to touch it, didn’t want to touch anything after the way the screen had felt under his hand, and maybe he’d lost it. He’d always had an overactive imagination, and maybe he _had_ crashed his car, maybe that light had been headlights and his dying mind had conjured up a distraction.

 

“Am I dying?” he asked, his own quiet voice startling him. “This can’t be real, I’m dying.”

 

His back was to the door, and he’d been so distracted by the blanket that he’d forgotten to listen. His skin prickled with the sensation of being watched, and he spun around.

 

The corridor was empty. Everything was silent. Kurt backed up until he could reach out and touch the too-smooth wall, sliding his hand along it until he found the corner. He couldn’t touch the blanket, didn’t want to feel how unnatural the fabric would be, so he kicked it away, pressing himself into the corner. He wasn’t alone, the blanket was solid proof of that in the way that the glimpses in his periphery hadn’t been, and he didn’t want to be surprised by his captors.

 

The silent, still Kurt on the screen was the only indication he had of the passage of time. He couldn’t see the window without looking away from the door, but he could see the screens out of the corner of his eye as they went blank one by one, turning white and blending in with the wall until he couldn’t even see where they had been until the only thing left was his own face.

 

He couldn’t look away from the corridor though, because they had waited for him to be gone before leaving the blanket. If they didn’t want him to see them, he would just keep looking.

 

Eventually his knees began to ache from being rigidly locked for so long, and then the last screen faded away and the room began to dim. There was no visible light source, the walls seeming to give off their own luminescence that slowly decreased, and the corridor was growing darker too.

 

Kurt slid down the wall, tucking his knees against his chest and wrapping his arms around his legs. He kept his eyes open for as long as he could, but when the light was gone and there was still no sound, he closed his eyes and lowered his head and sobbed like a child.

 

~

_Human date 24 08 2011: K56 appeared unwilling to sleep even after lights dimmed. A check was performed that he is in healthy condition. Results positive._

~

 

His neck was stiff, and he was too warm. Kurt drowsily pushed the blanket off himself, and then he sat up so quickly that his head swam when he realized that he’d been asleep and woken up and he was still there, still in that room and someone had moved him while he’d slept and it hadn’t been some sort of waking dream because _he was still there_.

 

The lights were back, dim when he’d opened his eyes and getting brighter, and if he’d needed confirmation that someone was watching, he’d have it. The blanket was warm and so smooth it was slippery and not any fabric he’d ever felt before, and it made his skin crawl to touch.

 

He couldn’t remember if he’d lain down by himself, but he knew he hadn’t touched the blanket, and somehow the knowledge that whoever it was had been manipulating him in his sleep disturbed him nearly as much as being kidnapped in the first place. He wouldn’t have imagined that himself, his own mind would never do this to him, it had to be real.

 

“Please,” he said, his voice cracking, and he hadn’t even realized he was thirsty until that second. “Please, I want to go home.”

 

There was no answer, just the ever present faint breeze and the blanket still tangled around his legs. Kurt kicked it off, pushing himself to his feet and stumbling to the corridor.

 

“Hello?!” he shouted. His voice bounced and echoed and carried down the hall, and he hushed himself, calling more quietly, “Hello? Please, is anyone there?”

 

A voice drifted down, just faint echoes, and Kurt had to strain to understand it. “ _Warden threw a party in the county jail-_ ”

 

That was enough. It was a person, and he was singing in English, and Kurt took off at a run, chasing the faint hum of melody.

 

“ _…Everybody in the old cell block, was dancing to the jailhouse-_ ”

 

“Hey! _Hey!_ ” Kurt called, skidding around a corner and sliding across the floor, nearly hitting the opposing wall. “I-”

 

He stopped, because he didn’t understand. The old man kept on like he hadn’t been interrupted, dancing an odd shuffling dance, his eyes closed and singing the words forcefully for a man who couldn’t be under eighty. Kurt checked behind him, but the halls were empty. It was just him.

 

Kurt waited patiently until the man stopped singing, because what else was he supposed to do? “Excuse me?” he tried.

 

The man opened his eyes and turned his head in Kurt’s direction. “What, kid? Need an autograph for your sweetheart?” he asked, voice creaking. His eyes seemed to bore straight through him, and Kurt shivered.

 

“No, I-”

 

“I can’t stop the whole show for you, kid, I’ve got a set to perform.” He looked away, addressing the wall. “This here next one is for all the lovers. I hope you enjoy it.”

 

“What’s going on, why am I here?” Kurt demanded. “Did you do this?”

 

“ _Love me tender, love me sweet, never let me go._ ”

 

The old man couldn’t or wouldn’t hear him, and Kurt was leaning towards couldn’t. He didn’t know where else he could go though, he couldn’t leave his only clue, so he pressed his back against the wall, alternately watching him clumsily perform and looking to see if anyone else would come.

 

“ _You have made my life complete, and I love you so_.”

 

The old man’s voice warbled, bizarre in the otherwise near-total silence as he moved to a beat that only he could hear. Kurt had to listen, unable to tune out the only piece of humanity he’d found since leaving Blaine’s house. The sheer surreal quality of standing quietly for a musical performance on an alien spaceship had a strange grounding feeling to it.

 

“Who are you?” he asked when the old man’s voice trailed off, leaving him standing there with his eyes closed and a smile on his face. “Why are you here?”

 

“Who am I?” the old man repeated, affronted. “I’m the King! Elvis! Why are you at my concert if you don’t know?”

 

It didn’t work, his mind refused to believe it, and Kurt stared at the old man. “Elvis is dead.”

 

His expression shifted from mildly offended to enraged in a second, and Kurt stepped back and away in horror as he lunged at him without saying another word. The old man didn’t stop, chasing ungracefully after him, and Kurt didn’t think after that, he just ran.

 

~

_Human date 25 08 2011: K56 appeared distressed. Access to E1 was provided as comfort. Measure unsuccessful. K56 continues to be distressed despite interaction with fellow human. Suggest re-segregation of K56 and E1 at minimum with possible re-introduction at later date._

_Please note that E1 has deteriorated badly. Recommendations to follow on course of action. Return is not option._

~

 

All paths led back to the room with the screens. The old man who thought he was Elvis had been lost in the winding labyrinth, and Kurt was alone again.

 

“He didn’t do this,” he reasoned aloud. “He’s a crazy old man, he couldn’t have done it. Maybe-”

 

He was being watched. Even if he couldn’t see them, he knew they were there, knew they had to be watching, and the more he talked aloud the more they’d know what he was thinking. He pressed his lips together. Maybe the old man was in the same situation Kurt was. Maybe he’d been going about his life and suddenly he’d been somewhere else.

 

How long had he been up here all alone? How long would Kurt be alone? He shivered and turned back to the corner he’d hidden himself away in when the lights had gone.

 

The blanket was folded neatly again, and on top of it there was a bowl. Kurt looked around and behind and above him, searching for any trace of anyone, any clue of how someone was coming and going. The old man hadn’t been there before, he was nearly sure of it, and that meant that there had to be some way out.

 

His foot slipped slightly when he stepped again. There was some sort of slickness on the floor, leading from the doorway to the blanket. Kurt skirted it as he approached the bowl, leaning in to inspect it.

 

It was half full of…something. Something thin and watery and weird-looking, but more solid than he thought it would be when he sloshed the bowl experimentally. He was thirsty and hungry, but not enough to touch whatever it was.

 

The slickness was more interesting, but about as disgusting. It seemed to be a sort of slime, and it took him almost too long to link together that slime stretching from the door to where something had been left for him meant that it was a trail. Something had left a trail. A gooey, wet, disgusting trail that was evaporating, disappearing faster every second.

 

The blood rushed to his head when he straightened, and he had to throw a hand out to the wall to save himself from falling. He still felt faint when he stepped, but the trail was disappearing, and he wasn’t going to feel better. It had been a long time since he’d eaten, and just as long since he’d had anything to drink.

 

He walked quickly, keeping his eyes on the trail, and almost missed it. Movement, out of the corner of his eye, clearer this time. A sudden jerk had it gone altogether, and almost left Kurt doubting his eyes, but he was certain.

 

Green, and slimy, and alive.

 

~

_Human date 25 08 2011: K56 has been fed but does not show interest. Suggest that is part of adjustment period and K56 has not yet begun to behave naturally. More tests will be required, however must wait to mitigate risk of injury if K56 is too alarmed._

_Suggest that K56 did not understand other humans are unconcerned for well-being upon initial exposure to images of substitute. Screens should be re-activated to reinforce._

~

 

He was making it all up in his head.

 

It didn’t matter how certain he was that he was awake, how sharp and real the corridors and windows and walls and crazy old men and terrifying green men were. He had crashed his car, and this was all in his head.

 

He sat in the same corner that he’d curled up in when the light had died and waited. His stomach felt pained with empty, his throat was dry, but it didn’t matter because it wasn’t real.

 

He wanted his dad to hold him and tell him it would be okay, wanted Blaine, wanted Mercedes or Rachel or even Finn. He closed his eyes and listened, willing himself to wake up.

 

His encounter with the Elvis wannabe reinforced just how quiet it was, and how ironic it was that Kurt would imagine a place so silent. He hummed a few bars just to fill the air with something, but his voice fell flat and tired.

 

_“I thought you’d finished off your back-to-school clothes budget yesterday?”_

 

He jerked to attention, looking up and around wildly. That was his dad’s voice, and it was his dad’s face on the newly reappeared screen, smiling fondly. This time it had sound, and Kurt had a front seat to something that wasn’t him talking to his father.

 

 _“I did, with Rachel, but Mercedes is back today. We’ve been planning this trip for weeks, I won’t buy anything.”_ Kurt recognized the wheedling tone as something that he’d spent years perfecting, and felt a surge of anger at the thing imitating him.

 

 _“Sure you won’t, and I won’t yell at the television tonight either.”_ Dad sighed, but he was still grinning. _“Well, it’s your college fund kid. Keep it in mind.”_

 

“No, it’s _my_ college fund,” Kurt shouted, his gut roiling with sudden hatred. “You’re not me, you don’t get to pretend to be me!”

 

He stopped. It wasn’t real. He couldn’t let it get to him like that. It wasn’t real, it wasn’t real.

 

“It’s not,” he insisted aloud, but his own smiling face mocked him from the screen as the thing wrapped its arms around his father.

 

~

_Human date 25 08 2011: Calming measures unsuccessful. Suggest no further interaction with K56 until he has adjusted. Lights will be dimmed to facilitate sleep._

~

 

The screen cut out, and Kurt stared at the blank white space where it had been. And then the light from the walls began to fade again, and he pressed himself back into the corner, waiting for darkness to cover up everything.

 

It took a moment, but he eventually realized that the light had stopped dimming before they were completely gone. The walls still shone white, and he’d be able to see if anything came. It wasn’t much of a difference from when the lights had gone before, but he felt safer than he had then regardless.

 

He waited. _Something_ had to happen soon.

 

He kept waiting, and then he realized that nothing was going to happen. Maybe the lights were off because he’d yelled, maybe he was being punished. Maybe-

 

He kept forgetting that he’d decided it wasn’t real. There was no one to punish him but himself.

 

He was still thirsty, still hungry, even though he couldn’t really be, because it was in his head, but eventually he reached over to where the bowl was sitting, still atop the blanket. Its contents flowed in an unpleasant semi-solid way when he experimentally tilted the bowl, but it was wet.

 

Kurt dipped a fingertip in, swirling it around and smelling. There was no odour, and he was grateful for that. He licked tentatively, and aside from a faint and unfamiliar aftertaste that lingered, there was no flavour.

 

There was no place to wash his hands, and scooping it out to eat it felt barbaric, so he tipped the bowl up to his lips, letting a tiny bit into his mouth and swallowing quickly.

 

It was gross, too bland and too sticky and too full of liquid to be palatable. It had soothed his throat, though, and that was good enough. He set it back aside and leaned his head against the wall.

 

Time passed, or at least he hoped it did. He didn’t know how long he’d been awake, couldn’t tell at all, but it felt like he’d been awake forever. He thought about forcing himself to stay awake, but it wasn’t worth it. If it was all in head, nothing could hurt him, and if nothing could hurt him, there was no reason not to sleep if he was tired.

 

And if it wasn’t in his head…Well, there wasn’t anything he could do about that.

 

When his eyes began to drift shut, he let them.

 

~

 

The lights were still low when Kurt opened his eyes. He felt even worse than he had when he’d fallen asleep, drowsy and hungry, but he was warm, the blanket wrapped tightly around him where he lay on the floor.

 

He’d been moved again, he couldn’t remember touching the blanket and the bowl was hadn’t been tipped over like it would’ve been if he’d pulled it in his sleep, but the air felt colder on his uncovered face, making him reconsider tossing the blanket across the room in a fit of pique.

 

Instead he sat up, clutching the slippery material around his shoulders, and contemplated the bareness of the room around him. His eyes skimmed over the window, he didn’t want to see it and refused to get close enough to it that anything beyond blackness was visible outside it.

 

Nothing had changed since he’d fallen asleep. He took the blanket with him when he wandered the halls, wrapping it around himself and peering around corners half-heartedly. He didn’t want to see anything, not really, not after Elvis and the green thing, but he had to try.

 

The corridors were blank and dim, the lights low everywhere, not just in the room. When Kurt found himself back at the room, he gave up. He sat back down in the corner and stared at the ceiling, waiting for something to happen.

 

Nothing did.

 

He slept one more time before it didn’t matter if it was all in his mind or not, his body was betraying him. He ate the substance from the bowl quickly, not thinking about the taste or texture or even the way that it hadn’t dried out despite how long it had been sitting in open air and how that meant that it had to have been replaced several times.

 

Okay, so he did think about the last one. And everything else as well, because there wasn’t much to do but think about things he didn’t want to consider.

 

Time was passing, but he wasn’t sure how fast. The bowl was refilled every time he slept, and wandering the corridors brought him nowhere new. When he looked out the window, the Earth was still spinning below, beautiful and so far away and just as alone as he was.

 

It was harder and harder to pretend that it wasn’t real as he dwelled on everything he’d felt when he’d found himself in the room and obsessed over every detail that he’d seen on the screen. He wasn’t sure if he was crazy to accept what was happening as real or to pretend it wasn’t, but he was tired of telling himself it wasn’t a real emotion every time he felt something.

 

Most of the time he spent awake was spent at the window now. He walked the hallways every time he awoke, and once or twice Elvis had been there, but he wouldn’t talk to Kurt and Kurt hadn’t been sure what to say when he saw him, so he’d turned around and walked until he’d found his room again, standing and watching and waiting for something to happen.

 

The worst part was the loneliness. Or maybe it was the boredom, or the wondering what everyone he loved was doing without him, or the way that nothing ever ever changed, or that he still had no idea what was happening to him. There were a lot of worst parts, and he’d had time to contemplate all of them.

 

He was observing a storm system swirling over Europe when the voices started, jerking him out of his thoughts and around to face the screen.

 

“ _I love you so much_ ,” his own voice whispered in at a level that wouldn’t carry even three feet if he’d really been there, but echoed around the room at the amplified level that came from the screen. “ _This is going to be the best year ever_.”

 

Blaine’s arms wrapped tighter around the double’s back, a squeeze that Kurt still remembered. They were in the hallway at McKinley, which meant that Kurt had been gone so long that school had started, and clearly no one had noticed. Not even Blaine. Not even his dad?

 

The screen didn’t disappear this time, following the thing that wasn’t Kurt around. It was talking to Blaine, to Rachel, to Finn, everyone, and it was so close to a perfect imitation that Kurt was almost convinced that he was the fake and not it, but then it kept looking right at him, the only one aware that everything was being watched.

 

It knew precisely what was happening.

 

He held out the faint hope that his dad would just know, somehow, that even if it was wearing his face it wasn’t his son, but not for long. He hadn’t before, and he still didn’t.

 

Altogether, it was confirmation enough that it was real, that what his mind thought was his life really was. The reality of it was nearly worse than the silence.

                                                                                                                            

~

_Human date 13 09 2011: Following adjustment of K56 to new environment, screens were reintroduced. Samples have been taken and are under analysis._

_K56 appears fascinated by screens. Suggest continued connection until end of testing, with time allowed for sleep._

~

 

The screen came on when he awoke, and turned off when he fell asleep, but always followed the thing that wasn’t him around. He missed standing at the window almost, the freedom of being allowed to pretend that people knew he was gone and hurt and alone and cared, but he couldn’t look away, watching as the thing sang and danced and cuddled with his boyfriend and hugged his friends and stole his dad.

 

At least now he had some measure of the passage of time, the camera occasionally showing a newpaper or a date on Facebook. It wasn’t much of a comfort though, now that he knew the days were ticking past and there was still no change.

 

It became passé after a while, though, because if he wasn’t going home, what did it matter what the thing did in his name?

 

The situation had crashed down on him long ago, and he sometimes found himself thinking about the chances of ever getting to leave, broken up by the periods where he couldn’t really bring himself to think at all.

 

Elvis was an uncomfortable and surreal piece of evidence that he kept coming back to. In his daydreams, Elvis had _wanted_ to stay, and that was why he’d never gone back, why they’d left a corpse in his place, and since Kurt didn’t want to stay, he’d be home soon. When he couldn’t be hopeful, though, he knew that Elvis was as much a prisoner as he was, even if his mind was long gone. When he’d first been brought up to the ship, had he wandered and suffered? He had to have, and he’d been there longer than Kurt had been alive.

 

The people on the screens began to take on a fake quality, too loud, too colourful, and he took to watching out the window again, imagining the people he’d known. He knew, of course he knew, that the people on the screen were the same people that he was thinking of, and that the set of events that was really happening was the one that wasn’t locked inside his brain, but he preferred to think of what he wanted to happen, not what was. It wasn’t like it mattered, anyway. He couldn’t change anything.

 

He didn’t like the thing that had replaced him very much, but it was complicated, and that made it harder again to look at the screen. No one else looked at him, acknowledged him, but sometimes the thing would look right at him and smile, or wink when no one was looking at it, and it had somehow become one of the few things that kept Kurt believing that he was the real one when his imagination ran away from him.

 

It was running for class president, auditioning for the play, spending time with his friends, doing all his homework, even trying to get into college. It was living Kurt’s life for him, and apparently it had settled in for the long term. It made Kurt wonder why it bothered remembering that he was there, even. Was it supposed to be, or was it playing to its own script?

 

It turned into an elaborate story in his head, the details flitting in and out of focus but the bare bones staying the same. The young alien, desperate for a chance to prove itself, but dangerously cocky, gets a chance with a simple impersonation. Its eager, but can’t help considering the human whose life it’s stolen. He wondered if it ever really thought about him, about how he felt, if it pitied him. Did it ever get frustrated pretending to be someone else, and wish it could drop the charade?

 

Then he realized how close he’d come to sympathizing with the thing that had stolen him, and he carefully looked away from his own face on the screen and stood up. He didn’t want to watch anymore.

 

“I miss you,” he said to Blaine the next time he heard his voice. It was the first thing he’d said in awhile, and he couldn’t tell if it was disuse or emotion that made it hurt.

 

He didn’t know where they were watching him from, but knew they had to be. He looked up at the ceiling and said, “Can you turn it off, please? I don’t want to see it anymore.”

 

It didn’t stop immediately, but the screens were gone when he woke up next, bright white patches of wall in their place.

 

Kurt didn’t feel like standing up to go back to the window, so he curled back up, pressing his face into the corner. He didn’t sleep, but he drifted, images flashing in front of his eyes no matter how tightly he closed them.

 

He just wanted it to stop.

 

~

_Human date 15 10 2011:K56 has requested the disconnection of screens and refused nourishment. Closer monitoring is required._

~

 

Time blurred again without the screen to hold it steady. The window didn’t hold the same draw it once had, and more often than not Kurt simply chose not to move between his body deciding it was time to be awake and when he fell asleep again.

 

He was lonely, and alone, and nothing ever changed.

 

~

_Human date 19 11 2011: Evaluation of K56 complete. Intervention required. Entering fail state._

~

 

The screen was back.

 

It was driving. He heard the sound first, a song he knew but couldn’t remember blasting from the radio, and it hurt his ears after so much quiet. It took effort, but he pushed himself over until he was facing the screen. His own face looked at him, smiled, teeth flashing in the darkness, and then went blank, so expressionless that it didn’t even look like him anymore.

 

There was a roar of engine, the sound buzzing in his ears, and he stared as the image in the screen moved around until it was looking over its shoulder.

 

It was hard to see, the headlights of oncoming traffic painfully bright after so long in the near-dark, and then it pulled the wheel hard to one side and the lights were even brighter, shining directly out of the screen as the enormous truck that the thing had swerved into the path of bore down.

 

Sound blared, an angry loud horn, and then the lights grew brighter and whiter and closer until the screen was filled and the room was filled and-

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the spirit of the original, you can choose your own ending from the chapter index.


	2. The Bad Ending

1

 

And then everything was gone, and Kurt had been wrong before about how it felt to die, but then it didn’t really matter anyway.

 

~


	3. The Not-So-Bad Ending

2

 

Kurt opened his eyes, but one didn’t work. He could see a blurry figure that slowly solidified into a man he didn’t know. He looked grim and unhappy, and Kurt instinctively flinched away.

 

His mouth was moving, but all Kurt could hear was noise, nothing made sense and everything was turning dark again.

 

~

 

“Hey you,” a voice said gently, and Kurt knew it, knew he knew it, but didn’t know who it was. “Your parents are on their way.”

 

His mouth didn’t work, throat wouldn’t swallow, and there was a bright burning light when he cracked his eyes open that terrified him, but something about the voice told him that he was safe.

 

“Don’t try to talk, okay? Can you move your finger if you understand me?”

 

He didn’t understand why the voice would want that, but it was so strange and wonderful to hear another person speak to him and only to him after so long alone that he would have done anything just to keep hearing it.

 

There was something pinning down one hand, so he lifted the fingers of the other. It was harder than he expected, but he couldn’t really bring himself to care why.

 

“You were in a car accident, do you remember?”

 

No, Kurt didn’t remember that, he remembered the sterility of the room, the loneliness, the fear and anger. It hadn’t been him that was in a car accident.

 

“Can you move your fingers again?” the voice asked persistently. “Please? For me?”

 

He could, and was rewarded by a warm, gentle hand stroking down his arm. He wanted to turn into it, beg to be held, because a face and a name were slowly taking shape as the voice continued.

 

“Thank you,” the voice said, breaking across the phrase into a shaky indrawn breath. “Oh god, Kurt.”

 

The boy solidified in his mind’s eye, and he risked forcing his one working eye open a little wider to try and catch a glimpse of his face. Sweet brown eyes stared down at him, brimming with tears, and it was him, it was, after so long without.

 

“Blaine?” he whispered, but he didn’t have any sound.

 

“Shhh,” Blaine breathed out, the same warm, gentle hand ghosting over his forehead, his cheeks, his neck. “You’re going to be okay.”

 

~  



	4. The Not-So-Good Ending

3

 

He’d drifted off into a daydream, and realized almost too late that he’d also drifted into oncoming traffic and there was a semi driving straight at him. Kurt hastily corrected his course, the shock of adrenaline from the near-miss setting his heart thumping hard enough that he just pulled over. The highway was nearly deserted this time of night anyway, he could take a few minutes to calm down.

 

When his breathing had nearly reached normal again, he shifted into park and pulled his phone from the cupholder to distract himself. Blaine would wonder why he wasn’t driving, they had the time from each other’s houses nearly memorized from driving it so often, and he had no guarantee that anyone else would be awake, so he’d settle for just scrolling through old conversations until he felt steady enough to drive home.

 

The problem was, he didn’t recognize the last text he’d sent to Blaine, or Blaine’s reply. He scrolled up, scanning over the texts, and couldn’t remember sending any of them. He flicked over to his texts with Mercedes, scrolling rapidly until he found the text he remembered sending to her earlier that afternoon, something about how hard shopping with Rachel was and how he couldn’t wait until she was home so they could go before school started.

 

He started to scroll down again, this time slowly, and the dates began to catch his eye. August 24th became the 25th, August became September, September turned to October, October to November, and he couldn’t remember any of it. The last text was November 20, and he couldn’t remember sending it.

 

He went back to his conversation with Blaine, checking the date. November 20. His dad was November 20. Rachel was, even.

 

“This isn’t happening.” He pulled up the calendar, looked at what it claimed the date was, went to his email, to Facebook, to every fashion and music site he had bookmarked. November 20. November 20. November 20.

 

A car whizzed past, so fast that its wake rocked the vehicle slightly, and Kurt sagged down onto the steering wheel, his phone dropping from numb fingers. It had been August twenty minutes ago, it had, and now it was November.

 

“I don’t, I don’t-” His voice was quiet and weak under the rumbling from the engine, so low that he could barely hear himself, and he had never felt so alone and wrong. “I don’t know what to do.”

 

His only answer was the occasional flash of headlights.

 

~


End file.
